DOOBIEXX  Easy answer: IP in menubar is coded in real basic, an easy language to learn, visual, pretty much anyone that can drag and drop can code an app in rb. They are not as pretty as cocoa apps, not as fast, and as you noticed not as small in terms of app size but it also hogs resources more than a clean cocoa app.

RB is really for people who either don't know much coding or who want to make multi-platform apps since rb can be ran on any OS. If your on a mac, use cocoa apps and in this case, ipmenulet.

Both apps are opensource at their respective sites so go and play!!  
(Version 4.1)

ANONYMOUS  I don't understand complaints about file size these days. Are people still using 14k modems with 10mb hard drives?  
(Version 3.1)

MACMAN  I believe his point was that, as hardware costs have declined -- especially storage costs -- many companies & programmers have become lazy and much less efficient as a result. I'm not saying this programmer is lazy at all -- but perhaps the makers of RealBasic aren't really making "tight and efficent" software.  
(Version 3.1)